Sigourney Weaver has inspired moviemaker Neill Blomkamp's upcoming Alien franchise film after chatting to her Chappie director about the character she played in the sci-fi blockbusters. Blomkamp spent hours chatting to his leading lady about his vision for a new Alien film and admits she made him rethink the whole idea.
He says, "It's just something that I've always wanted to one day be a part of. Those first two films are probably my favourite films ever made. I didn't know if it would ever happen (but) I just always wanted to participate in it if I was able to.
"Over the years, I came up with a story for a film in that universe that I wanted to make. And then when I talked to her about her experience making those films and what she thought about (character) Ripley and everything else, it informed and changed the film I wanted to make into something different.
"A year later, when post-production was winding down on Chappie, I started fleshing out the idea for a film that would contain Sigourney... I just worked on it when I could. Before I knew it, I had this really awesome film with a lot of artwork and a lot of back story. And then I didn't know whether I was going to make it or not. So I just kind of sat on it for a while."
Blomkamp recently revealed he had resumed work on the Alien project amid reports he had closed a deal with 20th Century Fox bosses to take charge of a new film in the sci-fi franchise.

Benedict Cumberbatch has whisked his pregnant new wife Sophie Hunter off to Bora Bora for their honeymoon. The couple exchanged vows on the Isle of Wight, off the coast of England, last month (Feb15), but had to delay plans for the traditional post-marriage vacation until after the Oscars, where The Imitation Game star was nominated for Best Actor. The Cumberbatches have since been spotted on the French Polynesian island.

Pussy Riot stars Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina have scored a cameo in the new season of hit Netflix drama House Of Cards - as themselves. The provocative punks cause a scene at a state dinner as Kevin Spacey's U.S. president Frank Underwood hosts Russian leader Viktor Petrov, played by Lars Mikkelsen.
The girls tip champagne on the White House table and storm out after President Petrov pokes fun at them over dinner.
The band's new song, Don't Cry Genocide, also features over the end credits of the second episode of the drama's season three.
The Pussy Riot stars were jailed in Russia in 2012 after performing their anti-President Putin protest song Mother of God, Drive Putin Away inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ The Saviour. They spent 16 months behind bars.

Dame Maggie Smith has confirmed reports she will be leaving Downton Abbey after one more season. Many experts expect the next season to be the popular period drama's last - and Smith insists the show cannot go on much longer, especially for her character, Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.
She tells Britain's Sunday Times, "They say this is the last one, and I can't see how it could go on. I mean, I certainly can't keep going... To my knowledge, I must be 110 by now. We're into the late 1920s."
And it appears she'll be glad to grab a little anonymity once the show ends and she bows out, adding, "One isn't safe after doing Downton. What's sad is I've gone through my whole life without any of that. I could go round galleries and things on my own and I just can't do it now. If someone decides to get at you, you can't get away.
"What's awful is it used to be just autographs, but now everyone wants photographs. You begin to feel like all those people who believed photographs took the soul away. There's nothing like privacy, but nobody will have that soon. Nobody's private any more."

Marilyn Manson has credited his mother's death in 2014 with inspiring a new-found love of fitness. The shock rocker admits many friends feared he would "crumble" after his mother Barbara's passing in May (14), but instead he quit drinking his favourite tipple, absinthe, and went running.
Manson tells Revolver, "I would wake up and go running - not from the police, but for exercise purposes. And I was doing fight training because I was on (TV drama) Sons of Anarchy...
"When you're sweating and doing physically active things, your brain synapses fire off entirely differently.
"I would go training and then immediately want to go into the studio. I had a lot of testosterone going through my bloodstream when I was making this record. It's not angry, it's not aggro, but it definitely has a swagger, a certainty about it, a sureness, a positivity... I know who I am on this record."

Madonna has risked upsetting parenting groups by revealing she sat down for a family film night with her nine-year-old kids David and Mercy to watch R-rated movie Whiplash. Ignoring the bad language and the violence in the movie, the pop superstar admits she "totally connected" to the film and "related to it" and decided her children had to see it.
She tells Rolling Stone, "I watched it with all my kids, and they were all very mesmerised by it, and I think a little speechless afterward.
"My son David was the most vocal about it... He said, 'Wow, I want to make my hands bleed'."
The Oscar-nominated movie follows the fortunes of a talented young jazz drummer pushing himself to the limit to impress his violent teacher, played by Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons.
Madonna adds, "When the character said, 'I'd rather be a 34-year-old genius who did something with his life, dead of a heroin overdose, than live to be 93 and do nothing', I totally was like, 'Yes'. That really resonated with me... I've had teachers like that, for sure.

British actor Stephen Moyer has detailed his battle with alcoholism for the first time to encourage fellow recovering addicts not to feel ashamed of their faults. The True Blood star has been sober for 14 years and on Friday (27Feb15), he agreed to share his addiction experiences with others as part of a panel discussion at the CLARE Foundation, a non-profit treatment facility in Santa Monica, California.
Moyer, who has served as a CLARE boardmember for the past five years, has previously only briefly discussed his sobriety, but he addressed his past troubles in depth for the first time at the event, revealing he used to think nothing of following in the hard-drinking footsteps of his acting heroes, Peter O'Toole, Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Oliver Reed, because going for a booze after work was the thing to do.
He explained, "There's this rush that happens from doing our job, this whirring buzz, and you want to continue that buzz."
Moyer soon realised he had a problem and subsequently checked himself into a British rehab facility.
He has been working with other embattled individuals to help them tackle similar issues ever since and he believes a key part of overcoming such troubles is speaking openly about it to remove the stigma of addiction, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
He said, "Self-loathing motivates the desire to get loaded (drunk) in the first place, and post-sobriety, there is the shame of admitting all of your (faults). It's about education. And it's about getting rid of that shame."
Moyer claims speaking openly about his alcoholism has prompted waiters at local restaurants in his Los Angeles neighbourhood to take note, and now they know just to bring him a diet soda whenever he goes out to eat with his wife Anna Paquin.
He added, "The Diet Coke, which is the Patron Saint of drinks for alcoholics, gets put before me before anyone even asks what we're drinking."

Actor Nick Offerman is heading back to his theatre roots in a stage adaptation of literary cult classic, A Confederacy Of Dunces. The 21 Jump Street star will portray funny protagonist Ignatius Reilly in the Boston, Massachusetts production, which is based on John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, about an obnoxious and overweight hot dog stand owner who constantly complains about the evils of the modern age.
A statement released by Offerman reads: "I am simply tumescent at the prospect of assaying the beloved character of Ignatius J. Reilly with our team of magnificent and weird artistic champions."
The play has been adapted for the stage by Jeffrey Hatcher and will be directed by David Esbjornson at the Huntington Theatre Company from 11 November (15).
Toole committed suicide in 1969, aged 31, after struggling to get A Confederacy of Dunces published. Writer Walker Percy and Toole's mother eventually managed to succeed where he had failed and the author was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981.
Offerman began his career on the stage in Chicago, Illinois, where he became acquainted with Amy Poehler, who would go on to become his co-star in hit U.S. sitcom Parks & Recreation, which ended its seven-season run last week (24Feb15).

Country star Faith Hill is undergoing regular physiotherapy sessions to aid her recovery process after having surgery on her neck last month (Feb15). The This Kiss hitmaker, 47, was spotted with a scar on her neck as she showed off a new, shorter hairstyle on the red carpet at the Oscars on 22 February (15), and now her representative has revealed to USA Today the mark was the result of a recent operation to correct damage sustained from an old injury.
A source tells People.com she had an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion, which is generally used to relieve pain from a herniated disc. She previously underwent surgery for the same issue in 2011.
However, the singer's condition didn't stop her from partying after the Academy Awards, where her husband Tim McGraw performed Glen Campbell's Best Original Song nominee I'm Not Gonna Miss You in place of the ailing musician, who is struggling with advanced Alzheimer's disease.
The country couple headed to the Governors Ball and the Vanity Fair Oscar afterparties and even considered stopping by a third bash.
McGraw said, "We finally just looked at each other and said, 'You know what? I think it's bedtime.' So we turned around and went (to the hotel) and went to bed. But we enjoyed the parties."

Animal rights activists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have gone hog wild after reading Kid Rock's new Rolling Stone magazine interview - because it starts off with a boar kill on his estate in Alabama. Rock, real name Robert Ritchie, takes journalist Patrick Doyle to a pen on his land, where he has caught three elusive hogs, and shoots two. His girlfriend, Audrey, kills the third.
In his write-up, Doyle describes the moment his host "points the pistol between one of the sow's eyes" and shoots after saying, "Bye".
The journalist recalls, "It collapses and writhes on the ground, running in place on its side for several seconds, its hooves rattling the cage... The other pigs go silent. One rubs its snout on the dead sow."
Rock says, "His a** is done", as he hands a rifle to his girlfriend, who kills a second boar - and he shoots another.
The host later holds a party in his barn and shows the "video of the hog execution on his Apple TV".
Attempting to explain his interview subject's act, writer Doyle adds, "Because hogs are a non-native species with high reproductive rates, hunters are encouraged to kill them year-round."
However, the explanation does not sit well with PETA officials, who have taken aim at Kid Rock for killing the hogs.
A spokesperson for the organisation tells WENN, "Anyone who does such a thing is psychopathically cruel. There are no words to describe the sort of human being who deliberately chooses to bully, frighten, and harm those who are in his power. Bullies are always desperate to prove they aren't the pathetic, soulless individuals they know themselves to be. We pity his (Kid Rock's) children."